The Contemporary Road Movie: Remapping Brazil’s Journeys on Screen

• In Event: Remapping Latin American Cinema

Abstract

Experiences of migration and displacement have been recurring themes in Brazilian cultural production and have been central to some of Brazil’s most iconic cinematic works. Indeed, Brazilian cinema has reflected on questions of national identity through issues such as the country’s formation which emerged from European colonial expansion, or successive policies of internal colonization towards the unexplored interior or the mass migration towards the vertiginously expanding cities which have dramatically changed the country’s social landscape over the course of the twentieth and beginning of twenty-first centuries. Classic films such as Vidas secas (Nelson Pereira dos Santos, 1963) or the later Bye bye Brasil (Carlos Diegues, 1979) are among the films which have probed into the country’s transformations through the central theme of the journey, in which the ‘national project’ and the lives of individuals seem to be on a collision course. This paper will consider a number of recent road films and will discuss some of the cinematic dialogues established with earlier productions through which the question of the nation is problematized and global issues such as environmental justice are addressed. Films discussed will include O céu de Suely (Karim Ainouz, 2006), Viajo porque preciso volto porque te amo (Karim Ainouz and Marcelo Gomes, 2009), and Eles voltam (Marcelo Lordelo 2012).

Author

• Sara Brandellero, Leiden University